


The Gold Band

by elle_stone



Series: Cold Creeps Up the Length of My Spine [5]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Horror, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-01-23 22:03:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21327382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: Dr. Jackson is awoken by a pounding on his door in the middle of the night. Through the peephole, he sees, dirt-streaked and out of breath, but still familiar, the man he once thought was the love of his life.
Relationships: Eric Jackson/Nathan Miller
Series: Cold Creeps Up the Length of My Spine [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1528046
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	The Gold Band

**Author's Note:**

> I don't specify the time period precisely, but this fic either takes place... let's say at least 5 years ago, or in an alternate universe. Marriage equality isn't a thing, in other words, and that's important to the story.

Dr. Jackson's medical practice is located in the middle of Main Street in downtown  Arkadia , but his home is on the outskirts of town. For many generations, until his father died some years back, the property was known as the Jackson Farm. Now most of the land has been sold, except for the acres immediately surrounding the old farmhouse, where Dr. Jackson grew up and where he lives still.   


The farm's closest neighbor is the First Congregational Church, which sits, along with its sprawling cemetery, just outside  Arkadia proper. Dr. Jackson likes to joke that he has the quietest neighbors in the whole village. But on cold and cheerless nights like this, the joke is just a little too true.   


Alone in his study, flipping idly through the pages of his book, and turning every now and then to stare at his reflection in the dark mirror of the window, he cannot help but wish that the old farm was a little less remote. Beyond the warm, yellow light of his reading lamp, the study is wrapped in shadows, which gather up in thick heaps in the corners of the room. And beyond the study, the rest of the house is utterly dark and still. And beyond the house, only a cold, bleak wind howls, and Dr. Jackson cannot help but shiver as he listens to it. When it reaches a high pitch and rattles against the windowpanes, it starts to remind him of the wailing of a human voice.   


He flicks over the page of his book, but the words seem little more than stray ink marks on the page, and his eyes refuse to focus on them. He flips back again and sighs, wonders if he should turn the light off and go to bed but—   


A sharp knocking sounds on the door, three forceful blows.   


Dr. Jackson sits up, immediately alert, catches his book at the last moment as it almost falls from his lap. His heart has jumped into his throat. He cannot pretend that the pounding on the door was his imagination, or some strange and gently inexplicable creaking of his old house. The sound was too definite. Too loud in the silence.   


It repeats: three steady knocks against the door.   


Dr. Jackson closes his book, very carefully and slowly, and sets it on the table next to him. Then he stands up and walks, very carefully and slowly, in his  sockfeet , across the study and to the door. He can see the front door from here, but the curtains on the front-facing windows are closed. He waits for the knocking to sound again. When it does, the noise rings out with a different hue: not the rap of knuckles but the slap of an open palm.   


He steadies his hands at his sides and walks down the hall with measured, deliberate steps. A part of him, he feels, is still in the study, still frozen, still waiting. Another part, a more distant part, a body controlled by some other force, is gently parting the curtains and peering outside.   


On his doorstep is a young man dressed all in black, with a knapsack slung over one shoulder and dirt streaked across his skin. He's leaning with his forehead against the door and one palm still pressed against the wood, and he's breathing hard; Dr. Jackson can see the pained rise and fall of his shoulders and chest in the stark glow of the porch light overhead.   


The young man is not a stranger, but his presence on Dr. Jackson's doorstep is as surprising, and almost as upsetting, as the arrival of a robber in the middle of the night. A man Dr. Jackson never thought he would see again. Nathan Miller: petty thief and the one-time love of Dr. Jackson's life.   


*   


Miller’s still catching his breath as he staggers over the threshold, reaching out to grab at Jackson’s shoulders with hands that feel like claws. His expression is wild-eyed and manic in the full light of entranceway, a shade of terror to it, buoyed by excitement and relief. His shirt has been torn from the shoulder, cuts and scratches scarring along his arm.   


"You think you can patch me up, doc?" he asks.    


These are ghost words, jarring words—they knock Jackson briefly out of himself. The first words Miller said to him when they met. A distant joke, like the faint smile struggling to form on Miller's lips.   


All of the time that has passed since they parted looms wide between them, then contracts. The wind blasts against the house again, crashing against the windows. The power flickers briefly.    


In the kitchen, he sits down across from Miller, examines the worst of the wounds on his arm and the stray scratches, the dimly discernable beginning of a bruise, on his face. He wipes the blood from Miller's skin. He takes in the damage. His hands are steady, at first, until he has assured himself that the injuries are minimal. Then, without warning, they start to shake.   


Miller traps them between his own and holds them still.   


But for a moment, the room still spins. He stares down at the sheen of the overhead light against the yellow linoleum floor, closes his eyes a moment to right himself. The wind is threatening a storm outside, and the rambling old house that always feels too large for him seems suddenly claustrophobic and small.   


Miller squeezes his hands tight. "You okay?" he asks. "Don't faint on me. I'd call a doctor but you're the only one I know."   


He manages a half-smile as he tries to catch Jackson's eye. Even when they first met, Jackson knew the stories about him, knew that the broken bone he was setting probably came from some adventure on the wrong side of the law. Didn't matter, anyway. Not as much as he'd thought it would. He still found himself spending long afternoons in Miller's tiny apartment, listening to the sounds from the bar downstairs as evening crept in, still caught himself thinking impossible thoughts about a future he knew would never come.   


"I'm fine," he says. He flicks his eyes up, meets Miller's gaze at last. It makes him uneasy. How Miller is still holding his hands, how his grip is too tight. That wild, bright glint in his eye.   


A clap of thunder outside shakes something deep in Jackson's bones, and he jumps again. A sudden downpour sounds so loud that he cannot find the trail of his own thoughts through it.   


"You seem nervous," Miller says. "Come on, it's just me." He rests his palm against Jackson's cheek, leans in close so that their foreheads touch. "Just me. I missed you. You know I didn't leave because of you—"   


"I know." He reaches up and presses his hand over Miller's hand. They are so close that he can feel Miller's breath on his cheek. He feels frozen, frozen as if by fear, as if the jolt he felt when he first heard the knocking on his door has not yet left him, and every movement he has made since has been like punching his way through ice or deep drifts of crackling snow. "I always knew it was temporary, what we had. You don't need to explain."   


"Temporary..." Miller breathes in, an uneven breath, lets it out in a staggered laugh that makes Jackson's stomach roll.    


He takes Miller's hand and draws it to his lips, presses slow, deliberate kisses to his fingers.    


"It wasn't temporary to me," Miller whispers. His words sound jagged and sorrowful. He pulls his hand from Jackson's grip and scrapes his chair forward against the floor, his palm on the back of Jackson's neck now, drawing him in to kiss him again just like he used to—the same desperation to his kiss that Jackson could see in his eyes, wild like the pounding rain beyond the window. "I said I wanted to marry you. Remember?"   


"Yeah. Yeah, I remember.” He mumbles the words between kisses. “That was always—just talk. You know we can’t.”   


His heart's pounding as if he were a teenager again, new to kisses like this, new to wild emotion like this.   


He knows that Miller wants to speak, wants to argue. And he can't let him. Missing him has been a sickness, long kept at bay. Now it threatens to overrun him again, to  fell him with fever and whole-body chills. The only cure he knows is no cure at all, only a painful and uncertain delaying of what he knows will eventually come.   


*   


_Even if we could get married_ , he'd said once, lazily drawing his fingertips down the center of Miller's chest — we can't.   


_Why not?_   


He'd given no answer, watched Miller take his hand and kiss each of his fingertips, felt like the gesture was a countdown and yet still by the end he had nothing to say. Wasn't it obvious?   


Wasn't it obvious that he could not have anything he wanted so much?   


*   


That such wanting could only bring catastrophe in its wake?   


*   


Jackson sits on the very edge of his bed and stares at the closed bathroom door. He can hear the storm still blowing, and faintly, closer, the sound of the shower running on the other side of the door. A chill emptiness stirs inside him, creeping up along his limbs.   


The shower cuts off. He rubs his hands together slowly, listening to the friction of skin against skin.   


When the bathroom door opens,  some time later, he looks up and sees Miller standing in the doorway, wearing Jackson’s clothes, his knapsack slung over one shoulder. All of the dirt and the last of the blood has been washed away. He hesitates for a moment, and Jackson feels a hesitation within himself, too.    


Then Miller walks forward, slowly, and gets down on his knees at Jackson's feet. He rummages blindly with one hand in the front pocket of his knapsack. He's caught Jackson's gaze with his and won't let him look away, even though Jackson jumps when the thunder sounds too close and the lightning flashes, and the power flickers once more and threatens to go out.   


"When I said I would marry you," Miller says slowly, "I meant it. I meant every word. I would give up everything for you. I would do anything for you."   


Each syllable is spoken so carefully, so deliberately, leaving Jackson every opportunity to interrupt, but he does not. He cannot. A hard ball is knotting up in his throat.   


"I know we can't do this legally," Miller continues. "But that doesn't matter to me." He turns over his hand, a closed fist, and opens it. In his palm lies a shining gold band. "If I put this ring on your finger, it's forever. That's how I see it. A real commitment just like anyone else's, just as sacred as any marriage in that old church. And no one and nothing can ever break it."   


He reaches out with his other hand, twines his fingers through Jackson's fingers. He waits a long time, with careful patience, for an answer.   


Jackson reaches out to touch the ring, then pulls back. All he can hear is his heart beating, the pounding of it in his ears, and very faintly, in the distance beyond, the sheen of rain-sound. "Where did you get this?" he asks. The question is little more than murmur, nearly inaudible.   


Miller just smiles, no humor to it. "From someone who doesn't need it," he answers.   


Slowly, carefully, Jackson traces his fingertip around the edge of the gold band. A sacred union, he thinks, just like in the old church—the idea is almost funny, almost thrilling. "Yes," he says, at last, his voice still faint. Miller doesn’t seem to believe him completely, not until he smiles and says again, louder: "Yes. I want to marry you. I do."   


Miller pulls him in to a hard and breathless kiss, and blindly slips the ring onto his finger.   


*   


The storm rages on late into the night, so that, when Jackson startles awake, he assumes a nearby rumble of thunder has roused him. Miller's arm is curled around his shoulders, Jackson’s nose tucked in against Miller’s chest. Whatever noise or coincidence or spare bit of dream disturbed his sleep has not bothered Miller at all: his breathing is calm and even, his expression serene.   


Jackson glances at Miller’s face, then settles down again, his ear over Miller’s heart, and listens to his heartbeat and the steady work of his own lungs.   


He tells himself that he could easily fall asleep again.   


The loud cacophony of rain begins to lessen, and he hears, underneath it and through it, an unusual noise. He takes it perhaps for a dragging sound. Perhaps a restless jangling sound. A slow movement, as of a weary body pulling itself along, closer and closer, somewhere outside.   


He holds himself very still. His throat is dry and aching, but he does not dare to swallow.    


The sound is so faint and uncertain that he can pretend, at first, that he does not hear it, and yet he continues to listen, and it does not go away.    


His grip around Miller's body tightens, and he turns his head very slightly to the side, trying to hide his face against Miller's chest. He closes his eyes. He cannot close his ears. The sounds are like footsteps now banging down upon the front steps just outside.   


Across the porch.   


To the door.   


He hears a knocking on the door: three heavy, threatening blows.    


He cannot move, but nor can he stay still. The dragging sound, at first, may have been only his imagination, his confused brain still caught in the remnants of a dream. But the knocking is real. He hears it again, another pattern of three against the door. A manic desire to flee overtakes him, mindless and useless, and he throws the covers back and launches himself out of bed. He trips over Miller’s knapsack in his haste. It tips over, and opens, and an object clatters out.   


Such an unusual, hard sound it makes against the floor.   


Jackson stands by the wall, trying to breathe, to think, to calm the frantic beating of his heart. He reaches out and turns on the light. Then he turns around, very carefully and slowly, and looks at the floor.    


Next to the knapsack is a skeletal hand, torn at the wrist. It has landed palm down, and its fingers seem to reach toward him across the floorboards.   


Downstairs, someone is still knocking, and in the bed, Miller still lies peacefully asleep. Jackson's lungs will not let him breathe. He holds his own hand up to his face and stares at the gold ring on his finger.    


Up close, he can see details he did not notice before, like the faintly inscribed initials along the bottom of the band.    


AMG.    


Abby Mayfield Griffin. She was his mentor once, and he remembers her funeral well. A drizzly autumn day, nearly ten years ago.   


The pounding on the door is getting louder, angrier, and when he tries to wrench the ring from his finger, it does not budge. He pulls at it wildly, madly. Above the sound of the lessening storm, he can hear it: the shaking of the doorknob as someone fights against the lock, a jangling sound like the rattling of bones.


End file.
